Tibetan and Himalayan Library - THL

Some Western Accounts of Encounters with the Dalai Lama at Wutai Shan

The Dalai Lama’s instigation of
these meetings is obvious from a dispatch sent to the British Foreign Office by the Ambassador to China, Sir
John Jordan. The dispatch is
dated February 4, 1908 (but marked as received in London on March 21). In the
dispatch Jordan describes a visit he had from a monk from Drepung’Bras spungs named Lozang TendzinBlo bzang bstan ’dzin, who was acting in
the capacity of an envoy of the Tibetan leader and carrying a message for the ambassador.16 The emissary said
[page 395]
that he would soon be setting out
from Beijing for Wutai Shan, where the
Dalai Lama was expected in a
matter of days. The dispatch further explained:

[The Dalai Lama] only went to Wu
Tai Shan because it was a holy place, but he had instructed his messenger, the
speaker, to present letters to various foreign Representatives as an expression of
good-will. The letter addressed to me was then opened and read. Its purport was
merely complimentary. It was sealed by the Dalai Lama… My visitor explained that [the rupture in relations
with Britain] had been due to the fact that the Dalai Lama’s subordinates had kept him in the dark as to
the true circumstances of State affairs; but the Dalai Lama now knew the facts, and was sincerely desirous
on his return to maintain friendship with the Government of India, whose frontiers
were those of Tibet. In further conversation I learnt that visits had been paid on
the German, French, and Japanese Ministers. Letters similar to the one addressed
to me were also presented to the other foreign Representatives.17

We must assume too that these other letters were accompanied by oral messages, much
as was the case here. It is therefore not unexpected that the Dalai Lama’s biography (as alluded to
above) briefly mentions the visit of a Japanese monk during the fourth month of the
Tibetan Year (May
31-June 28, 1908). However, the biography provides no information other than noting
the visitor’s presentation of gifts.18 This particular visitor may have been Otani Sonyu, a monk associated with
Ekai Kawaguchi, the Japanese who had spent several years in Tibet incognito.19 Clearly, the Dalai Lama was
seeking to open up lines of communications with the outside world from Wutai Shan in pursuit of
what he saw as Tibet’s political interests, and to that end had sent an envoy to
Beijing to meet with foreign
representatives. Another dispatch from the British Ambassador, dated July 21, 1908,
alludes to the Dalai Lama’s
solicitude with regard to such matters, as well as to the degree of independence he
had vis-à-vis Chinese
desires to keep him in check at Wutai Shan. This dispatch recounts an unofficial meeting
that Reginald Johnston, a Colonial Service officer (later to become
known for his memoir of China, Twilight in the Forbidden City) who was at the time away from his post
traveling, had recently had with the Dalai
Lama:

After the usual Tibetan
ceremony of presenting a scarf, the Dalai
Lama asked if Mr. Johnston had brought any message from the British Minister. Mr.
Johnston replied in the
negative, explaining that he was merely traveling for pleasure, but he felt sure
that the Minister was desirous that relations with Tibet should always remain
friendly. This reply appeared to gratify the Dalai Lama, who said that he entertained a similar hope…
The Dalai Lama is engaged in
learning Chinese, with
the assistance of a teacher he has procured from Peking. He has his own Tibetan bodyguard, who have sole control of
the gates of the lamasery in which he resides.
[page 396]
There is
also a guard of Chinese, whom the Dalai
Lama appears to regard with contempt. As might be expected, there is
bad feeling between the Tibetan and Chinese soldiers, and the Chinese officials complain that they are ignored by the
lama.20

The reported tension between the Tibetan troops accompanying the Dalai Lama and the Chinese soldiers around them mentioned here is also implied in a dispatch
from China printed in the New York
Times which described his entourage as “a wild, disorderly,
unkempt-looking crew, giving no impression of their religious affiliations.”21 Another Times story
stated that “his retinue consists of priests, personal servitors, high officials of
the church and a motley crowd of doubtful-looking soldiers armed with rifles… The
officials of the large cities which the Lama has visited say it takes about $5,000 to
entertain him and his retinue for a single day.”22 As for the Chinese
soldiers with whom the entourage was said to be having troubled relations, they were
numerous and had attached themselves to the Dalai Lama and his party before they reached Wutai Shan. In spite of
this, the Dalai Lama seems to have
secured his quarters and what transpired therein from Qing surveillance. A third dispatch in the
Times noted that “The
Dalai Lama has been holding a
religious court for the past three months at Wutai Shan, and he has made himself a great
nuisance to the local authorities.”23

In this regard we may return for a moment to Reginald Johnston, who described his visit with the Dalai Lama in greater detail in an article
written in 1919 and published under the pseudonym “Christopher Irving.”24 Therein he describes the situation in which the Chinese troops assigned to the Dalai Lama were placed. Johnston reached Wutai Shan on July 4 and,
as he writes:

A few hours after my arrival I received an official call from a Chinese captain named
Wang Fang-lin, who had been
appointed to the command of His Holiness’s Chinese body-guard… Wang (assisted in this
respect by two civil officials) was also expected to keep an eye on the political
side of affairs and to report to his superiors any dealings which the Dalai might
have with the outside world. What made Wang’s position peculiarly difficult was
that he and his troop of soldiers were regarded by the Dalai and his suite with a
dislike and a suspicion which they made no attempt to conceal, Wang himself was
not admitted to the great man’s presence, and indeed neither he nor the so-called
Chinese body-guard
were allowed within the precincts of the great lamasery. On the occasions when the
Dalai Lama issued back and
forth on horseback for the purpose of visiting the shrines of
Wu-t’ai-shan, he was followed and preceded by a
cavalcade of his own Tibetans,
[page 397]
and the Chinese guard with Wang at its head was
obliged to take up a modest position at the rear of a procession of which it
formed no recognized part… [I]t is also probable that they regarded Wang as a
spy…25

Writing about his own audience with the Dalai
Lama, which took place on July 5, the day after he arrived, Johnston particularly noted that “The
privilege of entering the sacred precincts of the Dalai Lama’s abode was denied to a Chinese official but it was readily accorded
to a member of the race whose martial activity had obliged the incarnate
Avalokitésvara [sic] to flee from his capital and country.”26 Otherwise, much of his account of the actual audience is given over to the
preliminaries, particularly the conundrum of having to arrange for gifts for the
Dalai Lama unexpectedly and at
short notice. The audience itself lasted a mere fifteen minutes and, as Johnston described it, was largely devoted
to formalities, with the Dalai Lama
expressing his hope of meeting the British Ambassador in Beijing and of being able to communicate directly to him
his desire for harmony between Tibet and British India: “That this harmony had been
interrupted in recent years was, [the Dalai
Lama] observed, entirely the result of regrettable
misunderstandings.”27
Johnston was not overly impressed
by the Dalai Lama: he recounts a
trick which the latter played on Captain Wang which, he asserted, “if it might have
been excused in a mere man, was hardly becoming in an incarnate divinity.”28 The ruse in question was one in which the Dalai Lama slipped out of his residence one morning,
undetected by Wang. While he had not gone far from Pusa Ding, he led Wang to believe that he had
gone miles away to the most distant of the site’s peaks and caused him to waste hours
trying to catch up. The trick gave the Tibetan leader a respite from Wang’s attempts to observe
him,29 but Johnston saw it as an
act of sheer maliciousness. It’s worth remembering that in the wake of the British
Younghusband expedition – the
military campaign that had put a British invasion force in LhasaLha sa and caused the Dalai Lama to flee into exile – there was
no dearth of English writing on Tibet that portrayed the institution of the Dalai Lama in a less than flattering
light; Johnston’s attitude was very
much in harmony with this body of writing.30

The Dalai Lama’s biography
indicates that he met with American, French, German, and Japanese representatives.
Johnston notes only two other
foreign
[page 398]
visitors besides himself who called on him: the
French explorer Henri d’Ollone and Rockhill. D’Ollone, like Johnston and Rockhill, has also left a very brief record of his audience with the
Dalai Lama. Moreover, he
provided an original illustration of it (reproduced below) as well.31 His audience took place just before the hierarch left Wutai Shan for Beijing; indeed, d’Ollone felt at first that it was unlikely there would be an audience
at all. However, taking advantage of the circumstances, d’Ollone tried a bit of manipulation. He states that he informed the
Dalai Lama’s “chanceller” that
the Tibetan leader would
certainly need to deal with complaints about Tibetan attacks on French missionaries when he reached the Qing capital; and even though
he, d’Ollone, might not be able to meet personally
with him, he had no doubts that such deeds were regretted by the Tibetan leader. D’Ollone stresses that the Dalai Lama could not likely refuse to meet him after this.
But while he makes a point of his own cleverness in procuring an audience, the fact
is the Dalai Lama was already
concerned about establishing contact with a wide range of foreign representatives, as
evidenced by the dispatch of an envoy to Beijing for that very purpose. In any event, that same evening
d’Ollone was told that he would be received by the
Dalai Lama. Thus, the very next
day – the day before the Dalai
Lama’s departure from Wutai Shan – he was taken to the Dalai Lama’s residence compound by the commander of the
Chinese guards (most
likely the aforementioned Wang
Fanglin). There he found the Tibetan guards armed with Russian rifles and wearing uniforms
that seemed to him like archaic European ones.32

The audience itself is mentioned briefly and it was no doubt short, given the
pressing business of moving on to Beijing. D’Ollone describes the
Dalai Lama’s clothes and
appearance, as well as the exchange of khatakkha btags and gifts, and his short exchange with the Tibetan leader:

The Dalai-Lama is supposed to know all languages without having learned them;
however, as my interpreter ironically remarked, it apparently pleases him to
conceal the knowledge, which does not make intercourse easy. I spoke in French; my
interpreter translated my words into Chinese; a lama repeated them in Mongolian; and another,
bowing before the man-god, transmitted my words to him. He replied in a low voice;
then the same series of translations brought me his august reply. It was a truly
miraculous thing, but the replies very nearly corresponded to the questions, and
it was not absolutely certain that we did not understand one another.

He questioned me as to my travels in Tibet, and expressed his regrets at the
barbarity of the nomads, who refused to obey him, and also his sorrow at learning
of the murder of the missionaries. He reminded me that he had formerly sent rich
presents to the son of the king of the French – Prince Henri d’Orléans. When I
[page 399]
rose to take my leave he
offered me another scarf; then, at a sign from him, a lama brought him yet
another, even larger and finer than the first, and the god-man, presenting it,
begged me to bear it, as a sign of his friendship, to our emperor!

The interest of such a visit, as may be imagined, does not lie in the remarks
exchanged, which are necessarily insignificant. What was of interest was the
aspect of this divine incarnation before whom a notable fraction of the human race
bows down. Was he a monk, pickled in sanctity? or a mere puppet, intentionally
besotted since infancy by those who surrounded him? or a strong and remarkable
personality?

The two first hypotheses must emphatically be rejected. Not only does the
Dalai-Lama speak and act as a man habituated to command, but there is nothing of
the monk in his manner, nor even in his clothing.33

The lack of awe at the Dalai Lama’s
spiritual position which we find in the accounts of Johnston and d’Ollone
are at odds with Rockhill’s
description of the Dalai Lama and
of his own audience. They are also obviously at odds with the Tibetan descriptions of the Dalai Lama’s encounters with foreigners.
Much as we might want to see greater harmony between these accounts, there were, then
as now, divergent attitudes towards the Dalai
Lama and his country. Alongside the sense of mystic awe surrounding
Tibet that manifested itself in the views of people
[page 400]
and
groups such as the Theosophists34 there were also the no-nonsense views – bluntly political and by turns
disdainful and cynical – reflected in the writings of people such as L. Austine Waddell. The attitudes evinced
by Rockhill, Johnston, and d’Ollone simply fall within this spectrum. Greater significance lies
in the very fact of the Dalai Lama
being able to interact with foreign representatives at Wutai Shan with no Qing intermediary present. The short accounts
by Johnston and d’Ollone clearly indicate the Dalai Lama was well aware that his situation and the
situation of Tibet demanded that he take steps to repair relations with Britain and
France over outstanding issues: with the former, the lack of communication, distrust
and suspicion that led to the British invasion; with the latter, the deaths of French
missionaries in eastern Tibet.

One other account of the Dalai Lama
at Wutai Shan adds
to what we’ve already observed. This is the account of Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, the
future statesman and President of Finland, but at the time a decorated Russian Army
officer on a two-year mission (1906-1908) of exploration through Central Asia and
Northern China. On June 26, 1908, in the final stages of that mission he was accorded
an audience with the Dalai
Lama.35 The meeting is noted only cursorily in the Dalai Lama’s biography: “A Russian military officer [makpöndmag dpon] who was traveling had an audience
[with the Dalai Lama] and they
talked respectfully and solicitously.”36 What
Mannerheim has written largely accords with some of what we’ve already noted
concerning the Tibetan
leader’s stay. Thus, with regard to the Dalai
Lama actively initiating such meetings, Mannerheim states that in
coming to Wutai
Shan (in his account “Yutai Shan”) he himself had not intended to seek
an audience and his narrative leaves the clear impression that the audience was
instigated by the Dalai Lama, who
had noticed Mannerheim in a crowd on the very day he had reached Wutai Shan. As for the
effectiveness of the Chinese troops guarding the Dalai
Lama, Mannerheim was told by an official named Weng that the Chinese soldiers at Wutai Shan keep watch to
prevent the Dalai Lama from leaving
without authority. However, Mannerheim observed few soldiers and concluded that their
utility and efficacy were practically nil. This same official, whom Mannerheim
encountered as he reached Wutai Shan, tried unsuccessfully
[page 401]
to cajole
Mannerheim into including him in his small group should he chance to have an audience
with the Dalai Lama.37

The very next day after his arrival Mannerheim was indeed called for an audience and
found a visibly angry Weng outside
the Dalai Lama’s residence in full
uniform, along with a platoon of Chinese soldiers and their commander (no doubt Wang Fanglin). Weng tried to force his way in for
Mannerheim’s audience but he was blocked by the Dalai Lama’s own guards.38

Mannerheim’s meeting with the Dalai
Lama involved only two interpreters: his own, and a lama who
interpreted from Chinese
to Tibetan. As Mannerheim
recounts:

[The Dalai Lama] replied to my
profound bow by nodding slightly… [H]e started our conversation by asking, what
country I came from, how old I was and by what route I had traveled. There was a
short pause, after which he asked, with one or two nervous jerks of his body,
whether His Majesty had not instructed me to communicate something to him. He
awaited the translation of my reply with obvious interest. I was able to say,
however, that I had not had an opportunity of waiting upon His Majesty before I
left. After a few commonplace questions he brought the talk back again to Russia
and asked, if I knew the man who had brought him gifts from His Majesty the
Emperor to Takulan. He said
that he knew and appreciated the Russian Ambassador «Pu» in Peiping. I informed him that Pu was
dead.39 He said he knew this and that Mr. Korostovets had been appointed as his successor. He was evidently
anxious to know when the latter could be expected to reach Peiping. He begged me to convey his
greetings to him and to mention that I had been received at Yutai Shan. At a sign
from him a beautiful piece of white silk with Tibetan letters woven into it was brought
in and he gave it me [sic] with the request that I should present it to His
Majesty on his behalf, when I returned. When I asked if I might also convey a
message by word of mouth, he replied by enquiring about my rank. When the
interpreter conveyed to him that I was a baron and he was told that I intended to
leave on the following day, he asked me to stay for another day. On the morrow he
might, perhaps, be able to ask me for somethings (as it was translated)… I told
him that the sympathies of the Russian people were on his side, when he felt
obliged to leave his own country… Russians, both high and low, watched his
footsteps with satisfaction. Then I had to explain the working of a Browning
revolver that I had brought as a present. He laughed, showing all his teeth, when
I showed him, how quickly it could be reloaded by putting in 7 fresh cartridges. I
apologized for not having a better gift, but after two years’ travel it was
difficult to have any other objects of value than weapons. The times were such
that a revolver might at times be of
[page 402]
greater use, even to
a holy man like himself, than a praying mill. He appeared to relish all this…

At the exit I was pounced upon immediately by Weng, who tried to pump me as to what we had talked about
during such a long audience…

The Dalai Lama impressed me as a
lively man in full possession of his mental and physical faculties. The setting of
our talk and the difficulty of carrying on a conversation through the medium of
two uneducated interpreters, gave me no opportunity of a more interesting exchange
of views. From the whole staging of my reception it was sufficiently evident that
his love of China and her suzerainty was only moderate. Twice during our
conversation he gave orders to see if anyone was eavesdropping behind the curtain
over the door. It looked as though a good deal was left unsaid in his remarks. At
all events he does not look like a man resigned to play the part the Chinese Government wishes
him to, but rather like one who is only waiting for an opportunity of confusing
his adversary.40

Of equal interest is the fact that references in the Dalai Lama’s biography to Russian contact with him at
Wutai Shan are
limited to two meetings, one of which we have just examined. While this dearth might
seem striking, given that the train of events that brought the Dalai Lama to Wutai Shan can be said to have been set in
motion by Russian interest in Tibet, it is understandable, since the Dalai Lama spent the time between late
1904 and late 1906 in Mongolia
prior to coming to Wutai
Shan and had already had considerable contact there with Russian
officials, among them the Russian Ambassador to Beijing, Dmitri
Pokotilov. The meetings and discussions that took place in Mongolia yielded very little in terms of
substantive Russian support for the Dalai
Lama and he inevitably moved on to China.41

[21]
“Dalai Lama at
Ting-Chow,” New York
Times, Sept. 29, 1908. C. G. Mannerheim, Across Asia: From West to East in 1906-1908
(Oosterhout N.B.: Anthropological Publications,
1969), 688, numbers his suite and other attendants at three hundred.

[22]
“Buddhists Ruler
Long a Wanderer,” New
York Times, July 13, 1908.

[30]
L. Austine Waddell, Lhasa and its Mysteries
(London: John Murray,
1905), 30, refers to the Fifth Dalai
Lama as “this unscrupulous despot posing as the earthly
incarnation of the Gentle Buddha.” Towards the Thirteenth he was hardly more
positive (38-39): “His sham pretensions to divinity did not shield his sacred
predecessors from being deposed, imprisoned, and even murdered by their own
people… and they are not likely now to protect him and his hosts of vampire
priests from the results of his present hostile policy.”

…[It] was drawn from a sketch made by me the
moment I left the temple, with the help of photographs taken the following
day as the long procession set forth… [T]he costumes of the lamas are those
which they wore on the following day. During my reception all were wearing
capes of cloth of gold, and were bareheaded, as was the
Dalai-Lama.

[34]
Well before the death in 1891 of Mme. H. P. Blavatsky, the
Theosophical Society’s founder and guiding light, the
society’s acolytes were being led to believe that she had traveled in Tibet and
been the recipient of occult training there. See, for example, Vicente Hao Chin Jr., ed., The Mahatma Letters to A.P.
Sinnett (Manila:
Theosphical Publishing House, 1993), 79.

[35] As already noted, the
Dalai Lama’s biography
indicates that Rockhill visited
the Dalai Lama at the beginning
of the fifth month of the Tibetan Earth-Monkey Year (June 29-July 28, 1908) and the Russian
“military officer” (makpöndmag dpon; that is,
Mannerheim), shortly afterwards. Given the specific date noted by Mannerheim, and
the fact that Rockhill described
his audiences with the Dalai
Lama in a letter to U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt dated June 30, 1908 (Wimmel, William Woodville
Rockhill, 168, 228) we must assume that the audiences took
place a few days earlier than the beginning of the fifth Tibetan month. The sequence of the
audiences is as described in the Tibetan biography: on June 25, the day Mannerheim reached
Wutai Shan he
encountered the Chinese
official named “Weng” who was
leaving the site, having been dispatched there in connection with “the recent
visit of the American Ambassador to the Dalai Lama.” See Mannerheim,
Across Asia,
687.

[38]
Mannerheim, Across Asia, 692-693. Reginald
Johnston noted that Wang
Fanglin had two civil officials with him and it is reasonable to
suppose that Mannerheim’s “Weng” was one of them. According to Mannerheim (687), Weng was an official with the
“Yangwutu” at Taiyuanfu.
Mannerheim’s transcriptions of Chinese are not standard or precise and we can assume that
Weng was actually with
the provincial Yangwuju
(洋務局) or
“Office of Foreign
Affairs.”

[39]
This is a reference to Dmitri Pokotilov, who had met with the Dalai Lama when the latter was in
Mongolia. He died on
March 7, 1908; see the Yearly
Tables of Chinese and Foreign Ambassadors and Consular Personnel of the
Late Qing, 36.

[40]
Mannerheim, Across Asia, 693-694. I am grateful to Johan Elverskog for drawing my
attention to Mannerheim’s diary of his trip through Asia as a source for the
Dalai Lama’s stay at
Wutai
Shan.

[41]
See Tatiana
Shaumian, Tibet: The
Great Game and Tsarist Russia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 90-125.